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Widow's Web & Cast In Courtlight

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Novel Deck

I had another birthday in July, taking me from "playing with a full deck" to "in the prime of my life". I celebrated the day, as I celebrate every day, by reading. The results of this daily celebration of reading for the month of July can be seen herein…

(Possible spoilers for the Wild Cards series, David Feintuch's Nicholas Seafort series, Michelle Sagara's Elanta series, Faith Hunter's Jane Yellowrock series, and Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, among others...)

J.V. Jones: A Cavern of Black Ice, completed July 2

With my current carved-in-stone reading cycle, after I reread I go to either "diversity" slot, or "trying a new author" slot, and this was time for a new author. Often some author or book has caught my attention and so I have already picked it out a while in advance, but this time all I had was "female author", and probably not space opera after the Vorkosigan book I'd just reread. I browsed the pool table where my new-authors-to-try books are collected, and I ended up drawn to this big thick fantasy novel by J.V. Jones. Like, 932 pages thick. Since under 100 pages per day is my usual pace, I decided to schedule it for 10 days of ~93 pages/day, which is about an hour and a half of reading every day; some days that's easier than others, and those days are the ones I make progress on my nonfiction book or whatever.

These days when I'm trying a new author, I give myself permission to just not finish the book if I'm not enjoying it, and especially if it's something thick like this. I've bailed on a few of those. So I was pleasantly surprised to find the book keeping my interest. There was one scene in the first chapter where the characters were having a scene of lighthearted rivalry that seemed a little meh, but things quickly took a turn for the darker so there wasn't any more of that. I mean, it's not that I only like grimdark fantasy or anything like that, but several of the books that I did stop were because the characters didn't feel like they had enough emotional depth.

There are inevitable comparisons to A Song of Ice And Fire here that keep coming up. For one thing, the majority of the action is taking place in cold northern climates, and a lot of it in winter, so there's that. There are also distant and uncaring gods, a tribal leader who keeps reminding me of something between Walder Frey and Tywin Lannister, and characters who keep having to carry on when they're badly hurt and nearly frozen. But there's a fair amount of actual magic, something that George R.R. Martin shied away from, though it is costly and doesn't always do the main characters all that much good.

Our main characters are Asarhia "Ash" March, a girl who was born outside the gates of a city in the prologue, and was adopted as a founding by the sinister Penthero Iss, who has Plans for her; and Raif Sevrance, a young clansman from the Blackhail clan, whose life is turned upside down when his father and the chief are slaughtered while he and his brother were out of the camp, and the chief's slimy foster son takes over. We also get POV from Iss himself, as well as Raif's young sister Essie (whose inclusion also feels vaguely Martinesque), Vaylo Bludd (leader of a rival clan, the Frey/Tywin analogue I mentioned earlier), and occasional others. The clans feel fairly authentic, mostly somewhat Germanic with cold-weather adaptations (and there are definite Inuit analogues around there too).

There are a few places where random helpful people show up to help out our main characters, but in general they seem to be well foreshadowed so it doesn't feel like too much of a cheat. One of them turns out randomly to be Raif's uncle, which maybe stretches things a bit, but mostly it's fine. I do have a little trouble taking the Bludd Clan too seriously because the name feels a little silly. (Would it be better if it was just "Blood"? Maybe?) But these are minor nitpicks, and I generally enjoyed the book, harrowing as it was at times. Unfortunately, that means I will now have to find copies of the undoubtedly-out-of-print-except-as-overpriced-ebook sequels…

George R.R. Martin (editor): Mississippi Roll, completed July 6

Next book would be a male author (or, in this case, male editor with both male and female contributors), and not a big thick epic fantasy. I ended up picking the next book in the Wild Cards series, which I'm amazed is still going. I started reading it in the early years, and bogged down a bit (particularly after Aces Abroad, the fourth book, which I didn't really care for). Back then I was only really interested in the characters with superpowers, not the jokers or skilled "nat" characters. The series initially ran for twelve books, and then a sequel trilogy, and then it stopped for a while. When I started doing more rereads, I ended up doing a reread of all fifteen, and by then there were more. There were two books after that published only as ebooks, which I didn't read for years, but eventually I did get ebook-reading capabilities and went on. And the series had started up again too, with a new generation of heroes (and some new writers).

The basic premise of the series is that, just after World War II, an alien virus was released on Earth, which caused many of the people exposed to it to die, many of the survivors to be deformed, and a lucky few acquired superpowers. When it came out, there were a number of shared-world series like Thieves' World and Heroes In Hell, but this was different, with superheroes in a more modern setting. After the first book, which covered the first few decades of the world with the Wild Cards virus, each book was taking place in a more or less contemporary timeframe. It was always grittier than comic-book heroes, but then it was the era of "Watchmen" and such when it first came out. The books weren't all in the same format, either: some of them were collections of more-or-less unrelated stories, each with a different writer; some of them were interleaved and overlapping short stories; some of them were "mosaic novels" where multiple writers wrote different characters interacting over the same timeline; and there were even a few single-author novels. George R.R. Martin was one of the early contributors (long before A Game of Thrones), and others included Walter Jon Williams, Roger Zelazny, Howard Waldrop (whose idea it was, apparently, to start the timeline in 1946), Melinda Snodgrass. Edward Bryant, Pat Cadigan, Stephen Leigh, David Anthony Durham, Lewis Shiner, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and dozens more. Often the books end up in three-volume arcs, and this is starting a new one. The books are almost all card references of some type, and this seems to start a sequence of books named after types of poker. It seems to have something to do with a riverboat.

It turns out that this book is not really the first of a new arc; although this book and the next two, Low Chicago and Texas Hold 'Em, are labelled "The American Triad", it actually seems like each book is supposed to be self-contained, and each trumpets that it would be a great starting point. I guess they want to attract readers who haven't read all 23 previous volumes or something? So it is strictly linked short stories, with one framing story that has its own resolution. The aces (and jokers) who show up are almost all ones that have been in earlier volumes, and the central plot has to do with Kazakh joker refugees from the last book (with ICE villains). It's not the strongest Wild Cards collection, unfortunately; in fact it may be the weakest since Aces Abroad in many ways, but it's not bad.

David Feintuch: Children of Hope, completed July 13

I wasn't sure what to go on to after the Wild Cards book, apart from "male author". I wasn't yet ready for another thick epic fantasy, and Wild Cards, as a superhero book, fits vaguely into "urban fantasy" (if you squint), so I decided to look at science fiction. (I already knew my next book would be a reread, but a Star Trek novel, in a slight break from the Vorkosigan series.) And I ended up picking this one, which would finish off a series.

Feintuch's Nicholas Seafort series is interesting, if sometimes problematic. The initial quartet follows Nicholas Seafort from his early days as a midshipman on a spaceship. Seafort is constantly tormented by the fact that, to do the right thing, he has to, as he sees it, compromise his honour and damn his soul to hell. And yet he does it, and is widely lauded as a hero for it, which is a torture that Aral Vorkosigan would definitely empathize with. The problematic parts, which are a thread through every book and so it's hard to tell if they align with the author's belief system or not, are 1) a conviction that corporal punishment and discipline is a good way to make an unruly person not only behave, but thank you later for making them a better person, and 2) a strong religious background. After the initial quartet there was Voices of Hope, a multi-POV book not centered around Seafort (though I believe he was still there), which suffered as a result, and then Patriarch's Hope, a welcome return to Seafort.

This book, interestingly, is a single-POV book, but it's not Seafort this time. Instead it's about Randy, the teenage son of one of Seafort's oldest friends, who got killed in the last book, and he blames Seafort for his father's death. He starts off as a thoughtless, rebellious teen (though there's a framing story where he's giving testimony of some sort to a church official) who makes a bad decision in a rage and then has to deal with the consequences. Many characters from previous books show up.

It's actually pretty gripping, because we not only have Randy's personal problems (and his trying to coming to terms with Seafort), but we also have growing conflict with the religious leaders on the colony (all of whom seem to be just cartoonishly evil), and we have a first-contact story, which is done really well. Definitely mixed messages about religion--Seafort is fond of assigning Bible verse memorization for disciplinary purposes, for instance, but practically every other character who even shows the slightest respect to the actual church actually ends up betraying him before the end. The ending of the book is a little open-ended, which apparently may have been because Feintuch was working on a sequel that he never finished before his death. Even as it is, it makes a decent coda to the series.

Diane Carey: Final Frontier, completed July 18

Next was coming another reread, but one of the breaks in the Vorkosigan reread. Amongs the books I've been interspersing with my series rereads have been Discworld books, Dick Francis books, and a lot of the old Star Trek books I read in my teens. A lot of the latter have not held up and I've weeded them. This book, from 1988, was probably one of the last that I bought. Also, most of the novels were standard length for the time, which is to say around 200 pages, but around this time they had put out a few extra-large (over 400 page!!!) novels, all of them odd prequels. We had Enterprise: The First Adventure, which occurred when James T. Kirk first arrives on board the Enterprise; Strangers From The Sky, a flashback to first contact with the Vulcans (which didn't look much like the "Star Trek: First Contact" movie for some reason), and this one.

Diane Carey had written a couple of the shorter Star Trek books by this point. I had read her first one, Dreadnought!, where she had own characters, a young Starfleet officer and her Vulcan or half-Vulcan companion, and the standard Star Trek cast members were secondary; I don't know that I ever read the second, Battlestations!. Luckily this one didn't get the exclamation mark on the title.

The premise seems a little weak at first--it's a book about James Kirk's father, George Samuel Kirk, who was never a captain in his own right, but was apparently a Commander and first officer. Ho hum. And we start with a framing story, explicitly set just after "The City On The Edge of Forever", in which James Kirk is, in the wake of Edith Keeler's death, wrestling with the question of whether he even wants to be a starship captain any more. So he's moping back on the old family farm, reading his father's old letters, while McCoy and Spock attempt to chivvy him out of his mood.

So George Kirk was a mildly corrupt security officer on a starbase, bilking traders out of gambling money together with his friend Drake. And then he gets abducted, which is cool. But just to bring him to a secret Federation base, where he's being shanghaied onto a secret mission, with Captain Robert April, on a new untested starship, so new it doesn't even have a name yet (though it's probably going to be an NCC-1700-something-or-other, three guesses), where they're going to perform a daring rescue of some colonists dying of radiation poisoning in an ion storm, as a combination of mission of mercy and PR stunt for the new ships. Oh, and we also get viewpoint from some Romulan characters (in fact, Rihannsu Romulan, as introduced by Diane Duane back before there was much Romulan worldbuilding) for some reason. And it turns out that reason is that somebody sabotages April's unnamed ship, so that when it hits the ion storm the warp drive kicks into overdrive and they go waaaaay off course…in fact, into Romulan space!

Maybe it's the extra length allowing Carey the room to develop things more fully, but I found this a really engaging book, for the most part (I don't know that we needed the tiny romance between April and the medical officer). The intrigue among the Romulans was well done, the character conflicts between Robert April and George Kirk, and the tensions of having to deal with a ship with tremendous capabilities but only erratically available because it's a) unfinished, b) short-staffed, and c) often damaged. (Which works better here than in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier", which by a weird coincidence I watched to the end for the first time while reading this book.) Suffers a little bit from the endemic 1980s random POV shifting, a.k.a. "headhopping", but it's not as bad as some books I've read. And there was also some real tension given that I didn't know whether or not Captain Kirk's father had actually disappeared mysteriously when he was ten years old, so I wasn't certain George was going to survive until the end of the book. So this held up surprisingly well and it's going to be one of the rare Star Trek books that I actually keep after this reread.

Michelle Sagara: Cast In Sorrow, completed July 23

Another female-author diversity slot, and once again I am using it for a Michelle Sagara West book. I went into some of her background back in my December book post, but basically, she seems to have her thick epic fantasy series under Michelle West, whereas under Michelle Sagara she has mainly relatively shorter works. Mainly, she has the Elantra series (or the "Cast" series, since the books in the series are all "Cast In something"), set mostly in the city of Elantra, with the main character of Kaylin Neya.

Kaylin was born in "the fiefs" in the city of Elantra, which are vaguely similar to the "hundred holdings" in the city of Averalaan in the Michelle West books, but with some differences. She's a low-ranking officer in the city guard, as every book tends to make a point of establishing early on, because otherwise we might forget it. She's a personal acquaintace of the fieflord Nightshade, she's been sort of adopted into the noble families of the ~elves~ Barrani, she has weird living runes all over her body which give her magical power which she is bad at controlling (except for healing, which is her spare-time avocation), she is friends with several dragons (dragons in mostly-humanoid form run most of the city), and in general she hobnobs, awkwardly, with a lot of the movers and shakers of the kingdom.

The books tend to be self-contained, though with threads that continue from book to book; this book is a bit of an exception, as a direct continuation of the previous book, Cast In Peril, which I presume just grew too long for one volume. It takes her out of her comfort zone (the city of Elantra) and across country to take part in a Barrani ritual, at the behest of Lord Nightshade, whom she owed a favour from an earlier book. Also from the previous book, she has a small dragon-like being (a "familiar") accompanying her, and nobody quite knows what to make of it.

Sagara/West is definitely a fan of the softer, vibes-based type of magic. Kaylin (like Jewel ATerafin) will do things based on instinct, not always sure if she can do them at all. Except that Kaylin can mostly do stuff based on the runes on her body--taking runes off of her body or absorbing other runes she finds. She has to do a number of very vague magics, many of them involving her Barrani colleague Teela, who was part of an earlier iteration of the ritual that went awry, and assemble a "story" with the help of Lord Nightshade. There's also some Barrani not-quite-politics, much of which (like the magic) revolves around the fact that some Barrani (and Kaylin) have "Names".

Perhaps because so much of the story is based strongly on what happened in the previous book, and also from Cast In Courtlight, the second book in the series and the first Barrani-centered one, I found myself at sea for large chunks of the book, trying to figure out what was going on. So this was not my favourite in the series to date, and I look forward to being back in the city for the next book.

Faith Hunter: Mercy Blade, completed July 27

I have started a whole lot of urban fantasy series, so I'm in the middle of a lot of urban fantasy series, and often I enjoy them, but perhaps not as much as I want to. Which tends to mean that I don't get through a lot of them as fast as I could. This felt like it might be time to stick an urban fantasy book into the sequence, which means I have to dither over the various series I'm reading trying to figure out which one I want. Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson) and Diana Pharaoh Francis (Horngate Witches) were fairly recent, so probably not back to those, and I just finished the Kelly Meding (Dregs) series and don't want to start a new one yet. I'm maybe starting to get a little more invested in the Ilona Andrews (Kate Daniels) and Seanan McGuire (Tobey Day) series but it felt like I should make progress with one of the ones I'd been neglecting instead. So I picked up the next Faith Hunter (Jane Yellowrock) book.

The Jane Yellowrock series has some nontrivial similarities with other series, but then they are all mostly drawing from the same well. Jane is a shapeshifter, not a were, kind of like Mercy Thompson. She's spending a lot of time in New Orleans dealing with vampires, a common pastime; in Jane's case, while she is an accredited vampire slayer, she's currently working for Leo, the head of the New Orleans vampires, as a security consultant. Some of the supernatural beings (vampires and I think witches) are public, but others are not (and hardly anybody knows that Jane's a shifter). And our main character has several boys after her, though currently she's dating an undercover cop named Rick.

I liked the previous book, Blood Cross, but this one did not do it as much for me. For one thing, there were annoying sequences of Jane being tempted to cheat on Rick, especially since he seemed to be cheating on her (or was that just something he had to do to keep from blowing his cover?). The "mercy blade" of the title, another supernatural being (of a previously unfamiliar type) whose calling is taking down vampires who have gone insane (or, through their magical blood, keeping them from doing so), is a somewhat annoying character that I did not really warm to. And then we get out main plot, of werecats (i.e. werepanthers, weretigers, etc.) going public and having high-level talks with Jane's vampire client…followed by a group of were_wolves_ coming out and threatening Leo with old murder charges. Now werewolves, with their stupid debunked alpha-based dynamics, are one of my least favourite urban fantasy race, and I don't think these ones have any redeeming features whatsoever, so they're just annoying. The plot is very tangled and lost me a few times, too.

I also dock marks for having a Harry Potter reference. (One of the major reasons that I gave up on Jennifer Estep's Elemental Assassin series after one book was a gratuitous Harry Potter reference near the end of the book. I mean, I'm sorry, if supernatural races were entirely hidden until after the series was written, then I'll give it a pass--but in Estep's series magic was publicly known for long enough that the cities don't even have the same names. Why would anyone be writing books about Harry Potter?) One amusing bit of worldbuilding is that vampires were outed when vampire Marilyn Monroe tried to turn JFK, and failed. So vampires have been in the world since the 60s, and still there was Harry Potter? Sorry, no, I don't buy it.

So probably this series has been pushed down in my urban fantasy cycle and it'll be longer before I go on to the next book.

James Goss (& Douglas Adams?): Doctor Who And The Krikkitmen, completed July 30

I have read a lot of Douglas Adams (not that hard, since he wasn't particularly prolific), and I have watched a certain amount of Doctor Who (I have watched almost all of Doctors 3 through 11, and rewatched a lot of 9 through 11 as well). So I was intrigued by the idea of a book that, presumably, depicted a Doctor Who version of Life, The Universe And Everything. I would be perfectly willing to believe that the story started out as a Doctor Who script proposal, at the very least.

But who's this James Goss guy? Ah, I see…I guess he's kind of novelizing the original script, or script treatment or whatever form it was in before Adams replaced The Doctor and Romana with Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect. (Probably not a one-to-one map in either case.) It looks like he's written other Doctor Who tie-in stuff, so I guess that's okay. I know there's a whole series of other Doctor Who stuff, novels and audiobooks and such, which I haven't delved into because mostly I'm not that interested, but this one seems to be all right. He does a decent job of channeling Douglas Adams's voice, at least as good a job as Eoin Colfer did with And Another Thing.

It turns out the original Adams treatment is in an appendix, and the doctor's companion was listed as "Jane"--not Romana, but not necessarily Sarah Jane either? Goss says he changed it to Romana because a major plot point is "Jane" supposedly flying to Gallifrey, which only timelords can do… The timeline is a bit fuzzy; well, of course, this is Doctor Who after all, but, I mean, what is the "present day" on Earth supposed to be? Because there are references to mobile phones and the Internet, and yet near the end it is heavily implied that Romana goes to meet Margaret Thatcher, who talks about "Ronnie" and his "Star Wars" nuclear defense. They may have had some sort of large mobile phones back in Ronnie's day, but not so much Internet. I guess it may not necessarily be implied that the internet and mobile phones are present on Earth, they may just be mentioned as things that alien planets have, but with the implication that the reader is of course thoroughly familiar with them. So I guess that's okay.

On the whole I quite enjoyed it, though it felt like it maybe went on a bit long. I don't quite remember the entire plot of Life, The Universe, And Everything, but I felt like we reached the climax of that plot at the halfway point of the book, so I kept wondering what the rest of the plot was going to be about. I guess we met more characters on Krikkit and got into their politics a bit more (and there was a highly unnecessary bit near the end with the two Jehovah's Witnesses [?] going to Krikkit and trying to talk the new leader into setting up a new religion), but I don't think there was anything there that the Arthur Dent version was really missing out on. (I guess there were things from the Hitchhiker's Guide radio show scripts that were omitted from the books and they weren't really missed…and some things work well in some media but not others, too.)

Lois McMaster Bujold: The Flowers of Vashnoi

I didn't expect to squeeze another book into July, actually. The Krikkitmen book was over 400 pages (though the last 40-50 were the appendices) and I normally don't read much more than 100 pages a day. But this week my car was in the shop and I was spending a lot of time on the bus, so I ended up getting more reading done than normal. (I finished so many books during the three-month period I was working for Nexopia and the parking was ridiculously expensive so I spent two hours on the bus every day.) And my next read was another novella.

The last thing released to date in the Vorkosigan Saga has been the novella "The Flowers of Vashnoi", but apparently it's not the last in the timeline. I couldn't quite remember exactly when it happened except definitely after A Civil Campaign, since it features Enrique Borgos, and it seemed likely after Diplomatic Immunity as well. But apparently it happens before Cryoburn, so here it comes in the reread sequence.

It's labelled as "An Ekaterin Vorkosigan story", and I guess I had forgotten that she is the only POV character, and that Miles himself is only intermittently present. As the title implies to the knowledgeable, it's set around the ruins of the city of Vorkosigan Vashnoi, the former Vorkosigan District capital until it was nuked by the Cetagandans. Count Piotr passed it on to Miles as a highly questionable bequest (and Miles mortgaged it to a Betan back in The Warrior's Apprentice to help buy Arde Mayhew's ship, though he got it back), and now he has a plan to help clean it up, courtesy of Enrique and some genetically-engineered bugs to help concentrate radioactive material for easy disposal. Ekaterin accompanies Enrique and Miles to their test site in the radioactive zone, only to find some of the bugs have gone missing…and maybe the area is not as deserted as they thought.

It's more similar to "The Mountains of Mourning" than any other Vorkosigan story, really, dealing with rural low-tech people and trying to keep them from being abandoned by the system. And attitudes about mutation.

#

I had decided to officially drop my Goodreads Challenge goal from 100 down to 90, to stop from feeling oppressed when I fell behind, and avoiding longer books. But sometimes I forget some of my techniques for gaming the system. Like, I had two very short books come in for me at the library, and I counted those against my total, and suddenly I was two books ahead. And "The Flowers of Vashnoi" only took me a day, too.

One of the library books was Terrible Maps from the social media account of the same name, which I followed on Twitter and Instagram and so probably don't follow any more since I'm on neither platform these days. (Are they on Mastodon or Bluesky, or even Tumblr? I should check.) Anyway, when they announced their book coming out, I requested the local library purchase it, and they did. It's not a big book, and I had seen most of the maps before, but the rest of my family enjoyed it, so there's that. The other one was There Are Dads Way Worse Than You, whose cover I'd caught a glimpse of, with Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader standing awkwardly looking down at Luke's severed hand; it looked cute so I put a hold on it. That one I found more disappointing; I might have liked it better if it was just a bunch of sketches of bad fictional dads, but unfortunately in addition to those it also had a poem about them, which I did not actually like. Admittedly, I wouldn't have recognized all the fictional dads on my own without labels, but this just felt too clunky.

Still making a little progress in the Risk book, though at some point in the middle of the month I went back to Marvel Unlimited to read another month of comics, a Sisyphean task by this point, since I seem to be long past the point where I read a month's worth of comics in a month. Well, whatever.

[hawkwinglb]

77. I've been reading this series for half my life: Cast in Atonement by Michelle Sagara

After twenty years, reading a new book in Michelle Sagara’s Chronicles of Elantra series is like visiting with old friends. The vast majority of my writing here is free to read and will remain so, but if you enjoy these sorts of posts, your support on Patreon or as a paying subscriber through WordPress is what subsidises me to write more of them. And — since I’ve abandoned the former Twitter —…

[kbookblurbs]

Cast in Shadow - Michelle Sagara (Chronicles of Elantra #1)

4/5 - Subversion of common fantasy tropes, main character falls into a type i love, minimal weird romance

Spoilers below!

This was a book given to me for Christmas by my aunt, and she usually has good book selections and has given me a number of the lesser known fantasy books that I've read. Her taste is also typically pretty well aligned with what I like to see, so I had high expectations for this.

I really liked that this book subverts the whole magical chosen one must save the world. To be clear, Kaylin, the MC, is chosen and does have magic powers, but the whole bit is that she is the threat to the world. Having sacrifices that are designed to render her a puppet for this world-ending power, meaning the cast of characters isn't (only) trying to save her but the entire world, really liven up people's motivations. Personally, I love when characters do bad things and have to atone for them, or bad things for the right reasons or for selfish reasons. It makes them feel more grounded. All of these characters are subject to this.

Kaylin herself had this tendency to go into a blind berserk rage when in the grips of her power sometimes and I love that type of female main character. She's usually kind and caring and focused on the welfare of others, and in the midst of her power, she's not only arrogant and cruel, but drunk off her own power and rage. I love complicated characters.

Where this book loses a point is Kaylin working for the detective force/cops, though admittedly the structure was so unclear to me that that almost didn't matter. Another is the writing. It was a good book and the characters were well formed but, sentence to sentence, sometimes I was left wanting an editor.

I also think the way they showed her markings on the cover is not only ugly but also wrong.

[easolinas]

Review: Shards of Glass by Michelle Sagara

Disclaimer: “Shards of Glass” is the first volume of a new series by Michelle Sagara, but it takes place in the same universe as her Elantra series, and harkens back to events from that series. So if you haven’t read that series, you’re going to be confused. And it seemed to open with a lot of promise, since a magic school opens the doors for a lot of exploration of a fantasy world. And…

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

WOTN Review: Cast in Wisdom

Fiefs, Magic, and Libraries in Cast in Wisdom Cast in Wisdom is the fifteenth novel in Michelle Sagara’s Chronicles of Elantra series. I’ve been a fan of this series since the beginning, and honestly, it’s hard to believe we’re so many books in already. This complex world is full of magic, a plethora of races, mortal and immortal, and politics. Kaylin Neya is Chosen. She doesn’t always…

[alchemist767676]

I choose to believe that this line exists because the author couldn’t think of a good verb here. I know that’s almost certainly not the case, but the idea amuses me.

[voltage-vixen]

‘Tis the Season for Love Content Creation Challenge Masterlist

Here’s the Masterlist from @xxsycamore’s and mine ‘Tis the Season for Smut Challenge! The featured content includes an assortment of creations, and includes works from the following fandoms:

Cybird    >Ikemen Prince    >Ikemen Vampire    >Ikemen Sengoku    >Ikemen Revolution Genius    >My Secret Spy Lovers Genshin Impact Mystic Messenger Obey Me Twisted Wonderland Voltage    >Ayakashi Romance Reborn    >Court of Darkness    >Destind: Mr. Almost Right    >Kings of Paradise    >Oops! I Said Yes?!    >Star-Crossed Myth

 A 🎨 next to a creation indicates it is artwork.

*Please be advised that some of the content created for this challenge contains NSFW content and to respect the creator’s warnings and labels while also reading at your own risk.

The Fluff Prompts

Starting with preparations way too early

Cybird

Ikemen Vampire

One More Christmas With You: Comte de Saint Germain x MC  @xxsycamore

Voltage

Star-Crossed Myth

Recovering My Star’s Shine: Zyglavis x OC  @fang-and-feather

Sipping hot chocolate and then stealing a kiss

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

Right Here: Clavis Lelouch x f!Reader  @scorchieart

Sipping Hot Chocolate and then Stealing a Kiss: Leon Dompteur x Reader  @violettduchess

Sipping Hot Cholate and Stealing a Kiss: Luke Randolph x Reader  @aquagirl1978

Ikemen Revolution

Sipping Hot Cholate and Stealing a Kiss: Harr Silver x Reader  @aquagirl1978

Ikemen Senogku

Sipping Hot Cholate and Stealing a Kiss: Kennyo x Reader  @aquagirl1978

Ikemen Vampire

Sipping Hot Cholate and Stealing a Kiss: Jean d’Arc x Reader  @aquagirl1978

Voltage

Ayakashi Romance Reborn

Like You as You Are:  Shizuki x MC  @lost-khione

Sweet Drink: Koga x MC  @lost-khione

Oops! I Said Yes?!

Cocoa Kisses: Shu Hasunuma x f!MC  @voltage-vixen

“Okay, maybe I DO need help putting the star on top of the tree.”

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

A Little Bit Short: Yves Kloss x Reader  @myonlyjknight

Make Me Reach for the Stars: Yves Kloss x MC  @xxsycamore

My Shining Star: Gilbert Von Obsidian x Reader  @aquagirl1978

“Okay, maybe I DO need help putting the star on top of the tree.”: Chevalier Michel x Reader  @violettduchess

“This gingerbread house just WON’T stay up!”

Cybrid

Ikemen Prince

A Chaotic Christmas: All princes, Emma, and OC in a platonic grouping  @myonlyjknight

A Sweet Moment: Yves Kloss x OC  @fang-and-feather

Ikemen Revolution

“This gingerbread house just WON’T stay up!”: Harr, Loki, and OC in a platonic grouping  🎨    @krys-loves-otome

Sharing a scarf

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

Scarf Sharing: Leon Dompteur x Reader @violettduchess

The Scarf: Licht Klein x Reader  @myonlyjknight

Warmth: Gilbert Von Obsidian x OC  @gilbertvonobsidian

Ikemen Sengoku

A Warm Winter Day: Kicho x Reader  @aquagirl1978

Sharing a Scarf: Kennyo x OC 🎨   @krys-loves-otome

Ikemen Vampire

Attention On Me!: Napoleon Bonaparte x MC  @xxsycamore

Mystic Messenger

Snuggles in the Snowfall: Jumin Han x f!MC  @voltage-vixen

“I said that I’d teach you how to ice skate, I didn’t say that I know how to ice skate.”

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

Ice Skating: Clavis Lelouch x Reader  @violettduchess

Voltage

Kings of Paradise

“I said that I’d teach you how to ice skate, I didn’t say that I know how to ice skate.”: Yosuke Sagara x OC 🎨  @cupidocherie

Forced to wear an ugly Christmas sweater

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

An Uncanny Resemblance:  Silvio Ricci x MC/Emma  @midwinterrmemento

The Ugly Sweater Party: Silvio Ricci x Reader  @aquagirl1978

Ikemen Vampire

Our Ugly Getalong Christmas Sweater Party: All residents of Comte’s mansion in a platonic pairing  @xxsycamore

Being the MC/LI’s fake date for a Christmas party/ball

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

Fake Date: Nokto Klein x OC 🎨  @krys-loves-otome

Mine For a Christmas Night: Jin Grandet x Reader  @xxsycamore

What a Difference a Year Makes - Chevalier Michel x Reader  @aquagirl1978

Genius

My Secret Spy Lovers

My Rescuer: Masamune Araki x Reader  @ikemen-prince-writers-posts

Voltage

Ayakashi Romance Reborn

Dancing Between Emotions: Toichiro/OC   @fang-and-feather

Surprising their partner in the morning with a new pet underneath the Christmas tree

Cybird

Ikemen Vampire

Birds Of A Feather: Dazai Osamu x MC   @xxsycamore

Voltage

Court of Darkness

Puppy Love: Toa Qelsum x MC   @chirp-a-chirp

Destind: Mr. Almost Right

The Gift of Family: Rei Rindoh x f!MC  @voltage-vixen

“Those clichéd traditions are exciting for me, now that I have you.”

Obey Me

It’s A Wonderful Life: Diavolo x gn!MC  @chirp-a-chirp

Twisted Wonderland

Traditions: Malleus Draconia x Reader  @ikemen-prince-writers-posts

Voltage

Ayakashi Romance Reborn

First Shrine Visit: Gaku x Futaba  @lost-khione

The Smut Prompts

Warming up together after a snowball fight

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

Warming Up Together After A Snowball Fight: Chevalier Michel x MC @ludivineikewolf

Genshin Impact

The Winnings of War: Childe x f!Traveler  @voltage-vixen

Wearing nothing but a ribbon around the neck

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

A Kitten for Christmas: Sariel Noir x Reader @norel-ravenclaw

Ikemen Vampire

I’m Yours Tonight: Arthur Conan Doyle x OC  @fang-and-feather

Fun under the blanket

Cybird

Ikemen Revolution

Fun Under the Blanket: Fenrir Godspeed x MC  @ludivineikewolf

Ikemen Vampire

Another New Year: Napoleon Bonaparte x Reader  @aquagirl1978

Bodies roasting by the open fire

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

Bodies Roasting By An Open Fire: Clavis Lelouch x MC  @ludivineikewolf

Ikemen Sengoku

Warlord Roasting By An Open Fire: Nobunaga Oda x f!MC  @voltage-vixen

“A kiss under the mistletoe doesn’t have to be where we stop.”

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

Don’t Stop: Jin Grandet x Reader  @aquagirl1978

Insatiable Cravings: Silvio Ricci x Reader  @ikemen-prince-writers-posts

Ikemen Revolution

Mistletoe Not Require: Zero x f!Reader  @chaosangel767

Voltage

Court of Darkness

Nothing Else to Compare: Roy Invidia x MC  @chirp-a-chirp

Star-Crossed Myth

Sweet Heat: Zyglavis x OC   @fang-and-feather

“I’ve decided I don’t want to be on the nice list this Christmas.”

Cybird

Ikemen Revolution

Dalim, Baby: Dalim Tweedle x f!Alice  @voltage-vixen

Ikemen Vampire

The Gift of Your Touch: Issac Newton x OC  @fang-and-feather

“Actually, there is one more thing on my wish list.”

Cybird

Ikemen Vampire

A Joyful Wish: Charles-Henri Sanson x Reader  @aquagirl1978

“Actually, there is one more thing on my wish list.”: Vincent va Goh x OC 🎨  @krys-loves-otome

Obey Me

A Wish Come True: Diavolo x f!MC  @voltage-vixen

“Those clichéd traditions are exciting for me, now that I have you.”

Cybird

Ikemen Prince

Yours For A New Year’s Morning: Jin Grandet x Reader   @xxsycamore

[xiki-doodles]

I love the Cohort and I need to draw more interactions with the rest of them... but we all know that Terrano and Mandoran are the top clowns stars of the troupe.

Image description:

A grayscale sketch drawing of characters from the fantasy book series "The Chronicles of Elantra" by Michelle Sagara. [Please read these books yall,,, please I'm begging,,, I need more ppl to enjoy this series w meeee dont worry that its 18 books and ongoing,, blease...]

Terrano, looking sassy: "hoes mad coz I can see shrimp colors"

Teela, looking annoyed: "I KNEW we'd regret teaching you to speak Elantran."

Kaylin, looking weary, hand on face: "we knew we would regret MANDORAN teaching him Elantran."

Mandoran, smug chibi in the distance: "lol hoes mad"

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[storiesandstars]

Thanks for the tag @downwarddnaspiral ! Don't think I didn't catch that Redbubble bit.

Last Song: Nothing Without You by Tanerélle. I've been stuck on my 2022 playlist, I need to venture into new and different lanes.

Last Show: Last finished show has to be May I Help You (Kdrama). A tearjerker for sure.

Last Movie: My last movie in theaters was also Wakanda Forever and I think Rosaline at home. Been watching shows more.

Currently Watching: Campfire Cooking In Another World With My Absurd Skills (there are a lot of good anime titles that have come out this month).

Currently Reading: I've been binging unfinished isekai manga lately, I'm not sure why. Some fanfic and Cast in Eternity by Michelle Sagara. I think the more scattered my brain is, the less I can focus on one story or show.

Currently Obsessed With: The plot to the SM fic I'm currently not writing and turning my home into a plant paradise.

Tagging @dragoncharming @neptunes-sol-angel @ancestralmedicinemagic @darkfyretheumbrawitchisback @bloomsoftly

Please join in if you'd like to and pass the game forward!

[companionsofusall]

[id: “Cast in Shadow” byt Michelle Sagara, but the cover is redone and hand painted. The spine and border are black, but with the cebter being brown, almost a wood texture. In the center of the book is a symbol of a hawk- like a medieval emblem- bright blue black and a mix between a gold and silver. The wings are spread, feet extended, beak agape. End id]

@xiki-pupper i remembered to post it! This is the book cover i mentioned awhile ago lol

[justaboot]

2, 6, &12 for the book ask?

2- Top 5 books of all time

Lord of the Rings. Hands down. Next.

Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom. Big tears, kickstarted my awareness of my own mortality at age 19. Made me need to call my mom and tell her I love her.

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes. I read this way too young, like, elementary school, and it messed me up beyond belief. I've only ever read it the once in elementary, and then again in middle school, but it's peak.

Cast in Shadow, Michelle Sagara. I'd doxx myself if I said why I initially picked it up, but if you like fantasy, I HIGHLY recommend. Messy, loud female ace protagonist in a high fantasy urban book series. Magic and daggers and cool fun characters and lots of drama.

I Love You Forever, Robert Munsch. My mom gave it to me on my first birthday, and I've never once read it and not wept. Never once.

6- What books have you read in the last month?

I'm currently reading Throne of Glass for a friend (it's her favorite in the world), and to be quite honest, I'm having the worst time with it.

12- Did you enjoy any compulsory HS readings?

I LOVED Of Mice and Men. (Spoilers I guess) I was so excited to read it, knew absolutely nothing about it, and was like, jumping in my seat when we got it from the library. I sat my freshman ass down as the rest of the class was coming back, opened to the title page, and someone had written in pen on the title page, "George kills Lennie." I was SO MAD, and I couldn't tell ANYONE. My english teacher took one look and laughed his ass off for the rest of the day.

[alfvaen]

Novel Battle

Last month I did a roundup of books I read, and it looks like I managed to do it again this month, woot. It's not quite the end of the month yet, but there's only day left in December 2023 and I don't think I'll be getting anything else finished this month (and I finished my 100 books on Goodreads), so I might as well do it now. (I have been trying to not leave it all to the last minute, writing bits of it during the month, which may be an effective strategy.)

Actual books under the cut--possible spoilers for Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, Michelle West's House War series, and maybe C.J. Cherryh's Atevi series, though I'm trying not to.

Michelle West: Battle, completed December 6

This is a slot for a female (or non-male) "diversity" slot author. It almost feels a bit cheating for me to use the slot for Michelle West (a.k.a. Michelle Sagara), who I've been reading for a long time now, and is somebody I'd read anyway, but her books are pretty thick and I have a tendency to fall behind on them, so I'll take whatever will get me to actually read them.

Back when I first read Michelle Sagara, I was heavily into Canadian SF and wanted to read everything that was eligible for the Aurora Awards every year, if possible. (It soon became clear that it was not, for all practical purposes, possible.) So I saw her on the list with her first series, The Sundered, and read them all. It's a series where the good guys lose at the end of the first book, and our protagonist ends up imprisoned by a demon lord type who is also her main romantic interest. This kind of dynamic has turned up a few times in her other books, to some degree or another. Later she came out with the Sun Sword series under the name Michelle West, a series of six quite thick books. (And, it turns out, there had been a previous duology, Hunter's Oath and Hunter's Death, set in the same world and featuring some of the same characters.) And after that, she started coming out with her Elantra series (a.k.a. the "Cast" series, since the titles are all like Cast In Shadow or Cast In Courtlight etc.), again under the Sagara name; slightly lighter, and thinner, fantasy novels featuring a guardswoman named Kaylin Neya living in a multiracial fantasy city (and by multiracial, we have like hawk people, lion people, dragons, elf-types, and telepaths, and probably others I'm forgetting). And after that, she started coming out with the House War series, which was designed to tie up some loose ends from the Sun Sword series. (She's also got another series, a YA-ish urban fantasy series called "Queen of The Dead", but I haven't tried those yet.)

So at the moment I'm reading both the Elantra series and the House War series; I try to get through one of each a year so that maybe I won't fall further behind. Battle is, as one might guess, in the House War series, which, as a series, is a bit odd. The first three books in the series are really their own trilogy, since they take place before The Sun Sword entirely (and one of them overlaps with Hunter's Death). And then comes Skirmish, which takes place after The Sun Sword, and continues on with Battle, Firstborn, Oracle, and War. (Firstborn and Oracle were not part of the original series listing, so I assume that the series stretched as she was writing it.)

The central character of the House War is Jewel Markess ATerafin, who I believe was introduced all the way back in Hunter's Oath and may have been in all of the Michelle West books to date. She started out as a street kid, leader of a "den" of orphans and homeless kids, until she gained the attention of the powerful House Terafin, and managed to win entry for herself and her den; later it turned out that she was a rare "seer-born", and she grew in power and influence. She is a fundamentally nice person, though, who would be happy if everybody just got along and nobody got hurt, so she's not comfortable wielding her power--something she may have to overcome by the end of the series, I suspect. (And, unlike some of Sagara/West's characters, she seems deeply aromantic-coded. Not even a hint of romantic feelings in any of the books to date.) Also, in these books it seems like any random character can turn out to be a retired assassin with a dark past, or a troubled immortal, or a secret mage, or some other such archetype. It works better than it has a right to.

So what is the House War? That's a good question. It's not, fundamentally, a struggle within House Terafin, or between any of the Ten Houses, at least as of yet. It seems more like a struggle of House Terafin, or all of human civilization, against outside forces, quite frankly. Battle has relatively little battle in it, in fact; it still feels like we're readying for the battles to come.

I've started supporting the author on Patreon, mostly because she was working on a new book in this world, Hunter's Redoubt, which the publishers passed on (possibly because she couldn't guarantee it being a reasonable length, or maybe the series just wasn't selling well enough for them), and I've only got three more House War books after this one, so probably by 2027 I'll get to reading it.

Ian Fleming: For Your Eyes Only, completed December 8

Feeling a little behind on my Goodreads challenge after the length of Battle, I decided to scan my shelves for something somewhat shorter, and less fantasy. And Ian Fleming is what I came up with.

I remember James Bond from an early age, between the HBO we (probably illicitly) had when I was a kid, and the promotion for the movie "For Your Eyes Only" (including the Sheena Easton song and the Marvel comics adaptation). These days "FYEO" is considered a lesser entry in the Bond canon, but I have a soft spot for it. I watched and rewatched a lot of the movies over the years, and at some point I started reading the original novels. They're not bad, though of course a product of a different time with all sorts of deeply-ingrained sexism (and probably racism too).

For Your Eyes Only the book is actually a collection of short stories. The first one, "From A View To A Kill", is perhaps the best, a straightforward but engaging story of Bond outwitting an embedded spy nest in France. (Little or nothing in common with the "A View To A Kill" movie.) The title story and "Risico" are the two that the "For Your Eyes Only" movie was built around--the former a story of an off-the-books mission where Bond avenges a pair of M's old friends (with the aid of their bereaved archer daughter, who became Melina in the movie), and the latter being the story of double agent Kristatos trying to set Bond against rival Colombo; the stories themselves are pretty good. Then there's "Quantum of Solace", which also has nothing to do with the later movie, and hardly anything to do with James Bond, being mostly a story told to Bond about a relationship that went sour, and "The Hildebrand Rarity", which oddly didn't get any movies named after it, about a horrible person who comes to a bad end on a boat on the Indian Ocean, and good riddance. While uneven, it was actually a bit refreshing to see Bond in different contexts and shorter pieces.

Jim Butcher: Warriorborn, completed December 9

Next, I wanted another male author, and still probably a shorter book. The Olympian Affair, the latest Jim Butcher novel, had just come out, and was devoured by several members of the household; this e-novella was kind of a precursor to it, and my wife had recommended I read it, and I decided it might be just the thing.

I have a read a lot of Jim Butcher--almost all of the Dresden Files (saving only a few of the more recent stories), the Codex Alera, and The Aeronaut's Windlass, the first Cinder Spires book (to which The Olympian Affair is the sequel). It's been some time since his last novel, Battle Ground, and quite frankly, that one left a really bad taste in my mouth. A lot of that was due to a particular character death which I really did not appreciate, but I can't tell if it's just that or if I've gone off him completely. So I have deliberately been avoiding the last few Dresden Files stories, and I wasn't sure if I was going to read any more at all, so I guess this was also a way of giving him another chance.

I apparently didn't remember The Aeronaut's Windlass that well, because I did not remember the main character of the story, or the whole Warriorborn class at all (they seem to be humanoid but part cat or something?). I remembered actual intelligent cat characters, but not these guys. Anyway, there was a story, it was mildly exciting, and it only took me a day to read it. I'm still not sure if Butcher has redeemed himself, but I did put The Olympian Affair on my to-read list, even if I probably won't actually read it any time soon. He may not be "don't read ever again", but he hasn't earned his way back up to "read as soon as the hardcover comes out" yet by a long shot.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Ethan of Athos, completed December 12

Three books since my last reread, so it was time for another one, the next (chronological) Vorkosigan book, Ethan of Athos. It's an odd duck in the series--no Vorkosigans appear in it at all, but we do get Elli Quinn, last seen getting sent off for extensive facial reconstruction surgery in The Warrior's Apprentice, in which she had barely any screen time. The book's POV character, though, is the titular Ethan, from the planet Athos, a planet of a reclusive misogynistic society that bans women entirely and reproduces entirely through uterine replicators and ovarian cultures. But when the ovarian cultures start senescing, and their replacement shipment is hijacked, Ethan is forced to head into the big bad woman-infested galaxy and try to remedy the problem. Which brings him into contact and/or conflict with Elli Quinn, Cetagandans, and other forces. And ends up broadening his worldview ever so slightly, though he does return home at the end…with perhaps the biggest dangling plot thread that never got revisited in the entire series. I was lukewarm about it my first time through, but by now I consider it pretty fun, but inessential. It does give you a chance to see Elli as a full-fledged character before you see her back with Miles again.

Cecilia Dart-Thornton: The Ill-Made Mute, completed December 18

After three short reads in a row, I was now ahead again. It was time for another female author, and for "trying out" one I hadn't read before. When I'd first started doing this, I limited it strictly to authors where I'd picked up one book at random and that was it, but I later broadened it to include other authors, particularly ones where I'd picked up two books by them and not yet read either. And the one I happened to have sitting on my shelf was Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute, which was both an interesting author name and an interesting book title.

It's an odd book in a lot of ways. The language is…well, you could say "rich", you could say "not afraid of using obscure vocabulary words". The setting is interesting--there's a metal that floats above the ground (not unlike something that they have in the Cinder Spires, actually), and some people use it to travel by floating ship or floating horse…which makes sense once you find out how dangerous overland travel is, because of all the wights (a.k.a. fairy folk, seelie and unseelie, many of which seem to be drawn from actual Celtic folklore, given the extensive references at the back).

Our protagonist is the mute of the title--stripped of their memory, speech, and name, disfigured by accident, and receiving only grudging kindness by their rescuers. Could be a more proactive character than they are, since they spend a lot of the time at the mercy of more powerful forces (and many capricious wights), but you do root for them to come through.

It turns out, by the way, that the other book in the series which I own, The Battle of Evernight, is the third book, not the second, so I guess I need to track down a copy of The Lady of The Sorrows sometime. Sigh.

C.J. Cherryh & Jane Fancher: Defiance, completed December 22

I only had three books left to read for the year, and 13 days to do it in, so I still seemed more or less on track, but maybe a shorter book would not go amiss--especially since we were planning to go out of town on the 23rd, something that I could finish by the 22nd might be a good idea. Female author still, and not high fantasy.

I often like to let books sit on my to-read shelf for a while; or, to put it another way, to not neglect forever the books that have been sitting there for a long time in favour of newer and shinier ones. But there are exceptions, for authors that I've read a lot of and am actually caught up on, where I try to keep caught up by reading their newest books.

I've been reading C.J. Cherryh for a long time--I started with her Morgaine books, after seeing her mentioned in Dragon magazine, and went through whatever I could find--Cuckoo's Egg, Serpent's Reach, the Faded Sun books, the Chanur books, etc. I fell behind for a long time, but the Atevi books (starting with Foreigner) helped, because I started reading them to my son. They're not kids' books, but he was a teenager when I read them to him so that was okay. (If it bothers you to think of a teenager still being read to by his parents, think of it as a "parental audiobook experience".) I had gotten about twelve books in on my own, but even restarting from the beginning, I was able to plow through the series (up to at least book 20) reading them aloud. (By this point he can read them on his own if he wants to, though.)

This is book 22 in the series, and while it seems to be starting out with recap (which was less useful when reading them back-to-back, but helpful now) it's probably not a recommended starting point. The length of the series is a tribute to the complex political situations that our characters get involved in, and she's probably not in danger of running out. This is her second novel, and first Atevi novel, crediting her longtime companion Jane Fancher as a cowriter, probably for reasons.

The Atevi series in general takes place on (mostly) a planet inhabited by a species called atevi, where a group of humans were forced to settle after a hyperspace accident left them unable to return home. After some initial friction, they are coexisting mostly peacefully, with one human (called a "paidhi") as a cultural interface. The current paidhi, Bren Cameron, ends up getting involved more deeply than usual in atevi politics, which is all I'll say in lieu of spoilers.

Josiah Bancroft: Arm of The Sphinx, completed December 27

I also picked this one largely on page count--I was planning on reading it in 5-6 days, which would cover the days when I was visiting my mother for Christmas. In a slight deviation from my normal tactic, I ended up allocating reading pages so that the two travel days (it usually takes us about six hours to do the drive) required fewer pages, and it worked pretty well.

The first book in the series, Senlin Ascends, involved Thomas Senlin and his young wife travelling to the Tower of Babel, the wife getting abducted, and Senlin going into the tower after her. The details of the world aren't particularly clear--there is a Tower of Babel but there's also steampunk technology and people with European names, and there's no map of anything besides the Tower itself so I don't worry about it too much.

In this book, the second, we have more an ensemble cast rather than just Senlin, and I think the change is quite effective. Senlin is a reserved gentleman thrust into unfamiliar situations, and sometimes he's a little bit repressed, so having more viewpoints was helpful. Plus it allows us, the reader, to learn things without Senlin necessarily learning those things as well.

I'm hoping that we'll shift our plot from "Senlin looking for his wife" to something with slightly larger stakes about the fate of the Tower itself, and the world. Because it's beginning to seem like Senlin and his wife may not have the most successful, loving reunion. We haven't seen much of her at all, really, and I hope that when we do, she'll have a stronger character than just "damsel in distress".

There's two more books in the series, which of course may be out of print by this point, but I think the odds of my finishing the series at all have definitely gone up.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Borders of Infinity, completed December 30

And then it was time for another read, another Vorkosigan book, whose placement may be a little bit controversial. It consists of three novellas, the first of which, "The Mountains of Mourning", takes place between The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game. The others do take place between Ethan of Athos and Brothers In Arms, but in this book there's also a framing story that takes place after Brothers In Arms. (In the more recent omnibus editions the novellas are rearranged, and the framing story disappears entirely. There's not much to it, so it's not a huge loss.) But there's no spoilers from BIA, it turns out (Miles is in the hospital with broken arms from an unchronicles adventure that happens after BIA, and while its events are alluded to, all that really comes up is that they were on Earth). BIA in fact takes place directly after "Borders of Infinity".

"Mountains of Morning" is probably the most affecting of the three novellas, as Miles has to investigate the murder of a baby in the backwoods of his district, with characters that show up again in Memory. "Labyrinth" is my least favourite of the three, though it's still good. It is the most novel-structured of them, with subplots and multiple settings, and its events serve as setup for the events on Jackson's Whole later in Mirror Dance. "Borders of Infinity" is a tour de force showing how Miles can accomplish his goals after stripped of pretty much everything, and also a good example of how to hide things from the reader that your viewpoint characters knows.

And that's December, and the end of 2023. Next up it will be a book from my dwindling supply of male "diversity" authors, Siege of Mithila by Indian author Ashok Banker. I also got a copy of the nonfiction book Paths of Pollen, written by my very own brother, that came out a month ago.